A two-parter…


Dear Blog,

I’ve missed you. Chalk it up to a flurry of activity, a healthy dose of procrastination, and a lack of inspiration to write. Here we are again at the end of October–almost 2 months since I’ve last written.

Fall canning kept me busy every weekend (and some weeknights) for the better part of a month. Our garden wasn’t much to brag about after an early-img_4680season hail storm, so we ended up with less tomatoes and beets than anticipated. A neighbor gave us some peaches, and the farmer’s market and a random dude at a warehouse in West Valley City took care of the rest. Side-story about random dude: I was looking specifically for Jonagold apples for applesauce after really liking the ones I got last year. I came up dry at the local Farmer’s Market but one of the vendors suggested I call Riley’s (a large fruit farm). I found their Facebook page, which listed a produce stand really close to my house so I decided to call the phone number from their page and ask about hours. The phone number connects me to Mr. Riley himself who informs me the local stand was closed some time ago, but gives me the number for his guy “Andy” who takes care of transporting and selling wholesale fruit for them. Turns out Andy never really knows what exactly he’ll get when, img_4676but takes my order for 2 bushels of Jonagold apples. Fast forward 2+ weeks, some missing apples, one heart attack, and a dozen random text messages later and I’m at a hole-in-the-wall warehouse in West Valley City with Andy loading apples in to the back of my car…including an extra half-box because “they aren’t quite as pretty as usual this year”. I then realize dude can’t run my credit card and offer to go to an ATM for cash, and Andy says “just mail me a check”…and with that I drive off. (FYI I DID mail them a check two days later). What an adventure just for apples! Grand totals for the season: 34 quarts applesauce, 24 quarts plus 14 pints pear-sauce, 13 quarts peaches, 13 pints beets (6 pickled/7 unpickled), 10 pints tomato soup, 6 1/2 quarts tomato juice. It was my first season using the pressure canner (tomato soup and beets) and I didn’t blow up our house. A couple of people at work complimented me on my canning success and wondered how I got it all done with three little boys. The answer: a very helpful husband and a healthy dose of insanity. No reasonable person working full time with three little boys will be blanching free peaches on a Wednesday night “just because” they need to be done unless they have a wicked streak of certifiable craziness. No matter, I already have big plans for next Spring. Gardening should be more comfortable NOT being 9 months pregnant or newly postpartum. Hopefully there isn’t any hail, and if there is it stays far FAR away from my yard.

At the time of my last blog I indicated I was going to start taking a Pilates class at work and try to get some of my eating habits back under control. I’m happy to report that in about 6 weeks of pretty serious calorie-counting and regular activity I managed to lose 12lbs! (I promptly took a vacation to WI and I’m pretty sure I will need to be much more disciplined again when I get home to UT). I am really enjoying the Pilates class. It is reformer class (vs mat Pilates) that I go to two mornings a week at 7am. Jason has been a saint and lets me throw him the children and leave the house early those two days per week. The class itself is wonderful and about the pace I can handle. As a friend put it: “Exercise you can do with your eyes closed and no shoes is my kind of exercise”.

Updates on the boys.

William is still drawing up a storm. His pictures are getting more elaborate, his penmanship is improving, and his stories are becoming more detailed. He is pretty good at basic addition and subtraction (as long as he can count on his fingers), and is starting to have a rudimentary understanding of multiplication. He is currently eating most everything. Some days he eats enough to make up for what Christopher is not eating. I expect some serious growing to be taking place shortly. He alternates between being a pretty decent young man and a wildly out of control non-listening jerk-face. He is really excited to start earning some of his own money and we started a chore chart so he can earn stars (and in turn get a small allowance). So far the problems we’ve encountered: He wants to earn all of the stars every day (even though we stress not all of the jobs need to be done daily), he wants to earn stars immediately, and has trouble with delayed gratification…I guess we’ll work on it.

Christopher is 2 1/2. Unfortunately I am reminded the only thing worse than a two-year-old is a three-year-old. *sigh*. It is a phase I just hope to survive. He is currently subsisting on graham crackers with milk, nutter butter cookies, chocolate milk, apple slices, and the occasional package of fruit snacks. He has the weak stomach of the bunch and occasionally just as we’re happy he’s eaten–it turns out he’s over-eaten and ends up throwing up (see airplane example later on). On the upside he’s becoming more articulate (though demanding), and doesn’t put up with William pushing him around (though he now sometimes instigates fights). He is still attached to his binkie, but will hand it off if he thinks it might get dirty or lost (at the park or when out shopping for instance). He’s really into superpowers right now and using his muscles. It is quite comical. His vocabulary has expanded to include choice words like “boo-yah” and “dang-it”.

Andrew is becoming extremely mobile but not yet crawling. He scoots on his stomach (mostly backwards) and rolls places extremely well. He takes it as an insult if you suggest he should sit on his own although he is rapidly improving in this area. His hand eye control is improving and he can pass things from hand to hand and get his binkie in and out of his mouth. I thought he’d be a thumb-sucker, but it seems he’s forgotten about that for now. He’s eating baby food puree, but doesn’t have chewing down just get. We’ve tried bits of banana and cheerios (at my mother’s insistence), but he ends up gagging or spitting them back out. He usually sleeps for an 8 hour stretch before one early morning feeding. Naps are varied, but there are usually at least a couple hour-long naps each day. Once in awhile we get freaky long nap that is a two or three hours long but that’s not his normal for sure. He’s totally in love with his two older brothers and will occasionally get in on the wrestling.

I’m currently writing this from my mom’s couch in WI. VERY shortly (like 3 days) after canning season ended in our house, we loaded up the family and headed to the Midwest for a visit. We flew into Chicago and then rented a mini-van to drive the remaining 3 hours to my parents’ house. The boys flew great, however getting them through the airport was like herding cats with your arms full of car seats and luggage. In Salt Lake I spent $5 on a cart to literally get our car seats and baggage less than 50 yards from the curb to the bag check while Jason parked the car and rode the shuttle back with Andrew and Christopher (I had William). In O’Hare there was a very real possibility of someone getting run over while we waited curbside for the shuttle to take us to our rental car. While Jason and I juggled luggage and Andrew, a nice Korean man boosted Christopher up into the shuttle van behind his brother or all might have been lost. My brother asked when we were considering visiting next year and I pointed out that we still need to fly back to Utah and forget about this trip before we get that far ahead of ourselves.

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Vacation has been good. I wouldn’t call it relaxing, but we’ve been able to do quite a few things and the boys have held up OK. We landed on Wednesday img_4851and spent most of Thursday recovering. Friday Jim, Jen and Clara came up from Dubuque and we took the boys (and Clara) to the local apple orchard.Saturday I did a little shopping and the boys checked out the Loganville Elementary School playground. (Crazy to think I played on some of the same equipment as a kid!) On Sunday we (and 85 or so friends and family) celebrated the 60th anniversary of my grandma and grandpa DeBaets. Monday was another recovery day with the exception of checking out the Webb Middle School park with the boys. Tuesday we drove to Dubuque, IA and spent a few hours playing with my dear friend Sarah and a couple of her kiddos. Tuesday evening we had dinner with Jim, Jen, and Clara and met their dog Lloyd for the first time before driving back to the farm for the night. Wednesday was a rainy recovery day during which naps were highly encouraged before we headed to Reedsburg to visit Grandma and Grandpa Koenig before bedtime. In the next couple days our only plans are to visit some more with the DeBaets grandparents and get our stuff packed back up for our flight on Saturday. We elected to get a hotel near Chicago on Friday night because our flight on Saturday too early to drive from the farm. Friday we might check out the park in Madison before ultimately landing our Chicago hotel by bedtime.

One highlight of our trip had to be meeting 5-week old miss Clara and getting to see my brother being a daddy for the first time. It sure reminds me of all the things we had to learn after we had William that got progressively easier with each baby. Clara is pretty mellow during the day but has the normal newborn struggles at night. She is super cute and next time we visit she’ll probably be crawling and have a great time playing with Andrew.img_4786

My thoughts on vacation thus far. Travelling with 3 kids under 5 is not restful. The bigger boys have slept great, but the little man has been restless and is sharing our room. 10 days is a pretty long trip for a home-sick 2 1/2 year old who tends be over-tired and over-hungry most of the time. It is great seeing old friends and how they (and their kids) welcome my kiddos with open arms. We always drive too much when we visit but it is an unavoidable evil of having friends and family spread throughout the countryside. WI is colder, wetter, and darker than UT this time of year. Vacation is expensive–I should not be allowed to go shopping to stock up on Badgers and/or Packers gear. Everyone else’s house has cooler toys than our house–as pointed out to me by William. The boys enjoy throwing the ball for Mike, but are both pretty scared of dogs since they don’t spend a lot of time around them.

Addendum:

Happy Halloween! Despite my best intentions I didn’t get pictures added to my blog before we left WI and therefore the blog didn’t get posted. So here we are back in Utah.

We visited the DeBaets grandparents on Thursday before packing our suitcases and starting our return trip to Utah on Friday. Friday morning we loaded up the rental van and headed to the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison. My parents came along for the adventure, and after a few hours at the zoo the boys were thoroughly worn out and ready for the remaining 2 hour drive to Chicago. After hugs goodbye for Grandma Laura and Grandpa Bruce the drive from Madison began and napping commenced. It was a VERY quiet drive to Chicago! Due to our early Saturday flight, we had used reward points to get a hotel room for Friday night. It was the boys’ first stay in a hotel!! Very exciting, but as far as I could tell, only William and Christopher managed to get any sleep at all. Morning came too early and I was already awake when the alarm was supposed to go off at 5. We packed everyone up and were at the rental car drop-off by 7am and on the 7:20am shuttle to the airport. Thankfully we were still running early because I thought our gate was C10–right until we got there and realized it was E10. Nothing like parading an extra half mile through O’Hare airport with your 3 boys under 5. The looks we got were either “look at those cute little boys” OR “look at those poor suckers”. I overheard one woman tell her husband “oh my god, they have 3 car seats”. Yep. That was us, before we even went to the wrong gate. William was pretty sure he was going to die before we got to our gate, but he made it walking the whole way and I was proud of him. If not for the 5 minute pit stop at Starbucks I may have also died so I understood his plight. Jason was incredibly understanding of my mistake, especially since he was carrying Christopher through the airport and dragging a suitcase. We made it to our gate with time for only one of us to use the restroom before the plane started boarding. Talk about cutting it close. The flight back was uneventful–other than that one time Christopher threw up on the plane–travelling with children is great. When you get up early and are excited your 2 1/2 year old will drink apple juice on the plane, right up until you realize he pounded it and throws up. We were so thankful to get home!

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I think that sums up the last two months of our lives. I shall now frantically add pictures before another addendum is necessary!

Til next time!

S.~

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